Settling
by Lex Munro
Summary: Jack/Ianto one-shot. SEQUEL to "Perfect." Ianto is well aware of the fact that Jack is settling for his third choice. Spoilers through Season Two and DW: The End of Time; warnings for a M/M relationship and PG-13 swearing.


SEQUEL to Perfect.

another short one that feels jumbled and not-quite-on, but MerianMoriarty gave me some Ten (merianmoriarty. deviantart. com/art/hatching-exercise-david-284076540).

if she does Eleven, too, i may have to actually try and write something good.

**warnings:** light crossovers are a given, since DW and TW share major plot points. spoilers for Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords, not-really-spoilers for the end of Torchwood Season Two. jealousy, Diet Angst™. language: pg.

**pairing:** Jack/Ianto with mentions of the ever-present unrequited Jack/Doctor and an implication of Jack/Gwen.

**timeline:** maybe...shortly after Journey's End (DW: s04e13) but before Children of Earth and The End of Time.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) "whinging" = "whining/bitching." 2) Myfanwy is actually a Pteranodon, not a Pterodactyl (no matter what Tosh says in the first episode). 3) "cross" - "angry." 4) "bloody" = an expletive somewhere above "damn" and "ass" but below "fuck." 5) it is generally agreed that the coral on Jack's desk is probably a baby TARDIS (they begin as coral-like structures and, over the course of a few centuries, mature into ships that are bigger on the inside and can alter their outward appearance). 6) "fancy" = "like" (as in _like_-like).

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><p><strong>Settling<strong>

Ianto comes up from the Archives and is greeted by the sound of Gwen's laughter.

"You didn't!" she accuses.

"Yes, yes, I did," Jack contradicts. "Stark naked through the town."

Gwen laughs harder, going red-faced and gasping for breath.

They're sitting close on the edge of the catwalks, legs dangling. When Ianto looks up at them, he catches Jack looking at Gwen with fond longing. He immediately busies himself with cleaning something, anything.

Ianto is perfectly aware of the fact that Jack is settling; he doesn't need to have it rubbed in his face.

Even if Jack had ever got Gwen, he'd be settling—he ran like hell one day, and Tosh's montage of CCTV footage showed him sprinting for a police box that Ianto had last seen in Torchwood Tower. It's a forgotten fact (buried in the bottom of Jack's huge file) that Jack is a known associate of the Doctor, and Ianto saw the way Jack looked when he talked about 'the right doctor.'

Third place isn't exactly glamorous, but it's not like Gwen or Ianto can really compete with an ancient time-travelling genius explorer. Jack's soul requires adventure, and no one could possibly be better equipped to give it to him than the Doctor. On that score, at least, Ianto is confident he rates higher than Gwen—he got the man a pet Pterodactyl, for God's sake.

It shouldn't make Ianto smug that even if his life will just be a blip to Jack, Jack's entire existence is of no particular interest to the Doctor.

Shouldn't, but it does.

The world is full of the fine tradition of settling. People marrying for means instead of emotion. People switching career paths to align with their abilities rather than their interests. People stuck in their hometowns because other prospects dried up. He wants to tell Jack to stop whinging and take it like a man.

He remembers the time Jack sat there behind his desk and admitted that the Doctor considered his immortality not just anomalous but _wrong_ (and he'd hated hearing that word, would have punched the skinny bastard if he'd dared to call Jack _wrong_ in front of Ianto, planetary saviour or not), remembers the pain and self-hatred on Jack's face, like he'd failed to be worthy of something wonderful.

Being third place hurts, but so does striking out on your first two tries, Ianto knows. In his last year of school, he dated his third choice, because the first two girls wouldn't give him the time of day. Now, from the other side of things, he wishes he'd been kinder to Penny Fields back then—she'd known she was third and hadn't had so much as a cross word to say on the subject.

He wants to look Jack in the eye and say something like 'stop looking like such a bloody martyr,' or 'settling for me is not the worst thing you could do with your time.'

He finds himself dusting Jack's office. Dusting goes quickly anywhere else, but Jack's office is full of Jack's things, and several of them are delicate and oddly-shaped, so diligent care is required. Books, shelves. Little boxes and paperweights. The lampshade and paperboard three-dee glasses. A jar of paperclips. The coral that Ianto suspects is actually some kind of alien life.

Behind him, he hears footsteps in the door. "As much as you dust her, she's gonna grow up with a crush on you," Jack says.

"Gwen went home?" Ianto asks, noting Jack's reference to the coral colony as 'she.'

"She suddenly remembered she'd promised to cook."

Ianto snorts.

"We had a long day, tracking those smuggled Athligian engine parts to a black market dealer based in the sewers. She just needed to wind down a little, to be reminded that it's not always muck and bad weather and alien death-rays."

Ianto looks at Jack with raised eyebrows. "Why are you making excuses for yourself? I don't remember accusing you of anything, and your distinct lack of concern for the 'outdated' twenty-first century practice of monogamy is hardly a new development."

He feels vindicated when Jack flinches minutely. "I just mean that we weren't leaving you out. You've always seemed to appreciate the peace and quiet of the Archives, so I didn't want to interrupt. Anyway, you've heard that story—the time in Aberdeen when the druggist came home early and caught me with his twin daughters while I was trying to steal back the Qillinok amulet."

Ianto doesn't remember the tale very clearly, but most of Jack's favourite stories involve extraordinary ex-boyfriends, nudity, or being chased by someone who decided that one of the first two merited a violent reaction. They all start to blur together after a while.

They stand together in silence for several seconds, Ianto with his duster, Jack empty-handed and beginning to fidget slightly.

"I'm not settling for you," Jack says firmly.

Ianto keeps his face very blank. "Beg pardon?" he says.

"I'm not with you just because someone else turned me down. You're gorgeous, and funny, and _fun_, and you make the best damn coffee in all of Wales—possibly in the whole of the British Empire. More importantly, you put up with me. I'm…not an easy person to be around for more than a few days, and I'm probably a little too ruthless most of the time."

Too ruthless. Ianto thinks of crying on the basement floor while his life fell down around him. "That's possible," he admits, only just managing to keep the venom from his tone.

"I like you for _you_," Jack says sharply. "And if some of the reasons I like you happen to overlap with the reasons I like someone else, it's not because I'm using you as a substitute of some kind, it's because that's the kind of person I f—fancy."

Ianto arches an eyebrow at the brief pause. He gets the feeling that 'fancy' was originally going to be 'fall for,' or perhaps even 'fall in love with.' Ianto shouldn't feel smug that Jack has problems with the idea of the L-word, either, but he's apparently in a spiteful mood today. "So I've got a lot in common with him?" he asks, a little sourly.

Jack's gone completely still, no longer even fidgeting. "You wanted to help her," he says softly. "No matter what I told you, no matter what you saw, no matter what she did. You wanted to help her. You knew I was right, too, and that just made it harder for you."

"Fuck you," Ianto replies, fist clenched tightly around his duster.

Jack shrugs and puts on a would-be flippant grin that Ianto doesn't believe for a second. "Well, that's my type, if I have a type. Cute, spunky, and suicidally compassionate."

Ianto suspects there's some specific event Jack's thinking of that parallels the horror in the basement. He's pretty sure Jack won't tell him if he asks. So he waits Jack out.

Eventually, Jack strides to the round window and puts his hands in his pockets. "A psychopathic Time Lord once held us captive for a year. We were…" His lip curls in disgust. "…pets. And this guy, he did horrible things, enslaving and destroying the human race so he could build an army he could use to conquer worlds. There were labour camps, huge shipyards, mass graves…his army killed innocent people for sport, chasing them down like animals. And after all that, after all the things the Master did, the Doctor still wanted to forgive. He held that dying monster in his arms and cried, and I never hated and loved anyone so much at the same time. And then I remembered you, in that basement, and I finally figured out why I couldn't shoot you then. That blind persistence born out of love is actually a quality that I hold in very high esteem."

"He appeared and you went running," Ianto accuses. "I think that makes it pretty clear what your priorities are." He doesn't add 'like the way you kept looking at Gwen at her wedding reception, even though you were dancing with _me_.'

Jack looks honestly surprised. "Well, yes, but—yes and no. He's—I just thought that if anyone in the _universe_ would know how to fix me, it'd be him. I used to just want to see him again, but after the first fifty years or so, I wanted to be able to grow old with someone. Think about it—when you were with Lisa, what was the one thing you wanted to do more than anything else?"

Ianto turns his head away sheepishly, all his fury and jealousy falling away. "Grow old with her," he admits softly.

They're silent again for a moment. Then Jack looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath. "When I was a kid, my mom told me that life is a journey, and that true happiness lies in walking side-by-side with someone special." He shrugs a little. "I was tired of leaving people behind while I keep walking. I wanted it to be over. And then I realized that I was moping like an old man, and I should go back to the carpe diem thing."

It makes sense. What the hell kind of long-term plans can a man make when he's seen and done everything, when he's loved and lost so much, when people marvel at how long a year is but he loses track of decades? It must all seem so pointless…

"Do you get what I'm saying?" Jack asks, turning with a pleading expression on his face. "After…what we'd started…and after Abaddon, what I wanted most was to be _normal_ for you. And then, when he told me he couldn't fix me, I decided I'd rather walk with you for as long as I can than keep walking alone."

Ianto is fairly certain he's blushing. He pretends he isn't. "So, then…when we danced at the wedding, and you were so distant…"

"I was thinking of all the things Rhys could give Gwen that I'll never be able to give you." Jack gives a lopsided grin. "Did you think I was lamenting lost opportunities? Because I was kinda doing that, too. I still think there's an amazing threesome waiting to happen. Maybe even foursome—Rhys is very huggable."

He rolls his eyes and starts to fidget with his duster. "Did you really want to grow old with me, Jack?"

Jack steps close, hands warm at Ianto's waist. "Yes," he says.

"Not such a great loss," Ianto says, trying for a light-hearted tone and possibly failing. "It's Torchwood. The odds have never been good that I'll live long enough to grow old."

And then Jack folds him into a tight hug. The duster is trapped between them, doing awful things to Ianto's favourite waistcoat. They don't say 'I love you,' but Ianto rather feels they don't need to. 'I want to grow old with you' seems more profound.

"How do you know the coral is a 'she'?" Ianto asks.

Jack laughs against Ianto's cheek.

**.End.**


End file.
